Sketches toward a Political Economy of Drink and Drinking Problems: The Case of 18th and 19th Century

Abstract

The level of alcohol consumption has important relationships to the prevalence of drinking related problems in an epidemiological sense. And it is in turn influenced to a large extent by material conditions created by social and economic forces. Historically, in England, the surplus grain produced during the transitional period from feudalism to capitalism was converted into distilled spirits and served as a major source of primitive capital accumulation. And commercial brewing was one of the first manufacturing enterprises to organize itself along the capitalist principles of production. These economic processes resulted in abundant supplies of alcohol which were literally forced upon the newly created masses of workers. This is how heavy drinking and drunkenness, which had been more common among the upper class, spread to the working class with the advent of capitalism.